As grief softens and the loved one is seen through eyes less clouded by raw sorrow, there is a tendency to feel as though they are sliding into history, becoming a statue in a museum of the past. Eventually you are able to recover a sense of closeness with the deceased that does not require a sense of poignant grief. It can take on a protective quality, as though the grief itself holds the person near, and bears testimony to their importance. When grief is required for feeling connected to the deceased, it ends up narrowing the relationship down to a single emotional color. The task, admittedly painful, is to tolerate the unsettling in-between long enough for the relationship to be rebuilt on more than grief alone.